Margaret Keane Quotes

A lot of art today doesn't convey much hope, and I hope mine does. I try to paint what I think the future holds and my innermost feelings about God's promise for the future.

I'd have to lock the door of the paint room. He wouldn't allow anyone in. I was like a prisoner.

M, you see, is four, and D is four too, and H is eight, and four and four and eight are sixteen, which is made up of one and six, which make seven—my number.

Walter was extremely charming. He could charm anybody, especially women.

But what I like most about Keane, myself, is that he's mass-produced, like a factory.

His art is in heroic bad taste. It's incredibly vulgar, it's weird, but it's still gorgeous. Bad-taste entertainment is the best entertainment. What I really love about Keane is that he is so commercial.

It was the eyes that did it. [timid giggle] I liked the way he painted eyes and he liked mine.

Children do have big eyes. When I'm doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Gradually it dawned on me that I was painting my own inner emotions. Those children were asking: "Why are we here? What is life all about? Why is there sadness and injustice?" All those deep questions. Those children were sad because they didn't have the answers. They were searching.

He can't paint eyes. He couldn't learn to paint at all.

He'd threatened me so many times. I thought he was so crazy he could hire a hit man to come get me anytime.

And Margaret, uh, has done a lot of experimenting in her work. I think, probably, no artist has experimented the way Margaret has.

I lost all respect for him and myself, and lived in a nightmare.

Margaret is probably the greatest woman painter alive.

The older I get, the brighter colours I live. But in the past, they were dark, dingy, sad colours.